Cafe of LIFE Chiropracitc – We Only Get One Chance

FIVE YEARS

What started as a dream way before I even went to chiropractic college, is now five years old!

Five years ago today, June 14, 2018, I purchased this beautiful big blue building and converted it into a sacred healing space. I did have the image that it would get to the point that it is today, however being in the “real-lifing” of a dream is…well I am not sure there are really words for it all.

I remember when I first saw the listing on Zillow. I took a quick screen shot of the listing and sent it to my realtor with the message “What is up with this?”

His quick response, “I don’t know but LET’S GO TAKE A LOOK!“

…and so the due diligence began.

It was quite a process that went day by day collecting information, paperwork, getting inspections done, discussing with my personal “board of directors”, getting contractors eyes on it, and on and on.

A process that began the end of February 2018 came to a close on June 14th and I got keys in hand.

The cool thing was that I had a sidekick at the time. The cooler thing is that said sidekick left and it was all me and has been that way ever since. What makes that the “cooler thing” is that it drove me to spend many days and night figuring things out on my own. The “cooler thing” is also that I drove me to make lots and lots of incredible connections with great contractors – too numerous to list – that still help me to this day. I have become someone that people turn to when they are needing a trusted and reputable contractor for their projects and I am always happy to share those connections.

After just a few months, I was able to move my chiropractic office here and open our doors. Within just a few months I was able to begin to host other tenants doing health and wellness work and the Peabody Center for Well-Being took off!

People often ask, “What do you do with all that space?”

What space?!?!? I don’t have any extra space as it is filled with incredible people doing incredible things! When you walk into the building, you can feel the good mojo in here! I purchased the building for the community. Of course, it is a great investment personally, that is without a shadow of a doubt, however, this place is a community center and BIG BLUE holds the community well!

So my questions to you are:

HAVE YOU BEEN IN YET?????

DO YOU SEE SOMEONE IN THE BUILDING YET?

DO YOU OR SOMEONE IN YOUR FAMILY NEED HELP WITH INPROVING YOUR HEALTH?

WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING FOR?

When you pull into our parking lot, you will walk down the sidewalk just off the parking lot and into our Center. Upon entering the building, if you turn your gaze to the right, you will see an info wall. There is a DIRECTORY there in the info center you can grab and see everyone in the building. You can also grab yourself some business cards and get in touch with individual businesses that you are interested in.

You can also find everyone on Facebook at Peabody Center for Well-Being (<— click here).

You can find the Cafe of LIFE Chiropractic Center on Facebook or me personally at Dr Erica Peabody Facebook or Dr Erica Peabody Instagram. I am very active and also respond to direct messages all the time. If I can help, I want to!

Okay, now that all of that is said, I just wanted to say THANK YOU! All of you! If you are reading this, know that I am grateful for your support big and small inside of this beautiful BIG BLUE building! It seems absolutely impossible that it has already been five years but here we are…and SO MANY MORE TO GO!!!

I love you so much. Thank you.

COVID CHAOS

I am writing this from inside some massive COVID chaos! I don’t even know exactly what to call it anymore except for that. (And when I refer to it this way, I am not talking lightly about it. This has been and is very serious as many have been very sick and even lost their lives. This is written from a safe place at home in good health with deep respect for the severity of it all.)

COVID chaos is one of the reasons that this blog has been on delayed because I didn’t know the best way to go about getting a new laptop anyway. I know I could have just ordered one and had it shipped to me but I am such a “hands on” (pun intended from this chiropractor) person and I like to touch and feel things prior to purchasing.

Best Chiropractor Fenton Michigan - Dr Erica Peabody - COVID chaos

So as I mentioned in the previous blog post, I got a great recommendation from a very knowledgeable person and just pulled the trigger. The experience with Best Buy was seamless and here we are.

So one week later I was noticing that my phone battery would hold a charge for a few hours and then I would have to plug it back in, I would be charging it 2-3 times per day. THEN, last Sunday morning I went on a kayak tour with my niece and nephew and put my cell phone in the “dry” compartment of my kayak…quotes intended. Well turns out it wasn’t dry and it sat in there while I did a few more errands in a bit of water unknown to me.

I put it in a bag of rice and later that day I accidentally dropped it and smashed the screen. On the computer with Verizon for 2 hours on Monday morning through their live chat section…they would say “Well just call us and we can handle it over the phone.” “Call you? With WHAT?!?!?!” Two hours later I have a new phone to be picked up at the local store, or so I thought, until I got an email with shipping information and tracking…now they decide they will ship to me.

Of course they try to deliver to my office during my lunch hour yesterday and missed us so they were going to try again today…Friday, when nobody is there. SO, now they will hold it where it is this morning and I will attempt to go and pick it up at the UPS location…except for I have done this before and they ask for an ID. Which is fine but they usually need the ID address to match the shipping address, except for it doesn’t match because the address on my driver’s license is my home, and this was headed to the office. This should be interesting.

I have seen many patients this past week and it seems this kind of chaos is happening all over. We are all ready to be released to a life of a bit more freedom and some familiar places and processes. The frustrations are high and the quarantine has gotten the best of many.

We are almost there. When things do open up, many will return to some old patterns and routines, and some have taken on an entirely new existence where the radius for desire for daily travel is reduced a lot and each of those is perfectly fine and well.

I have been in solitude for a good portion of the quarantine when I am not at my work. I enjoy the quiet of life, I always have, but I will also enjoy the more “hands on” experience of some of the things we took for granted prior to all of this.

We have all become a little more innovative with our personal and professional lives through this incredible time. The important things have bubbled up to the surface of our awareness and the people that are the most important inside of our lives are front and center. When it all boils down, a laptop and a cell phone are truly “first-world” problems and I realize these are insignificant problems compared to what others around the globe are dealing with and these are not real problems in the grand scheme of things, just using them for examples.

The COVID chaos has been eye-opening, everyone taking a “time out” from their normal lives has been challenging but good. It is going to be nice to get back to SOME of the things we enjoyed about the conveniences of life prior to all of this and NEVER taking any of it for granted again. Our freedoms are broad and wide in this time and place. I hope you and yours are safe and well and I will continue to pray for those who are sick and suffering.

PART 2

To continue from the previous blog, I wanted to give you an update on where I am now, following my Patent Foramen Ovale closure surgery, but also answer some of the questions you have had since the first post. Welcome to part 2.

In August of 2019, I was at my regular yearly check-up with my primary care physician. Now when I say “regularly yearly check-up” I haven’t been to anything “regular” and “yearly” except to see my chiropractor and functional medicine practitioner in years. Being a spouse of a GM employee required that I do certain things on that insurance and so I am following the rules.

When I was in that appointment, I said to her, “I know I have a hole in my heart. I may be planning to have my own family in the next couple years and I would like to pursue getting is closed ahead of time.” I had a different cardiologist recommended to me but she told me to absolutely go back to the same one I saw before and that he is the greatest in this region.

One test was redone and a few more tests were added to the mix to determine exactly the size and location. Funny and not funny part of this is that I happen to be a healthcare provider and also in good health inside of a cardiologist’s office and so they sort of took it for granted that I would already know how this whole thing would go.

I asked questions along the way, and although I didn’t get “blown off” it was more like “of course yes that happens…” and “of course no way it would go that way…” was always the attitude. Which ended up probably being a test to me and my ability to trust.

I am a generally trustworthy kind of person and so I just turned it all over to them to do what they needed to do and know that I was in the best care in the region. On that I settled in, navigated through it all and am now here to tell the story on the other side.

Many have asked “How are you feeling now?”

I feel GREAT!!! I truly do. Instantaneously following surgery my hands and feet were warm for the first time in my entire life. I remember back in chiropractic college, my fellow classmates would always mention just how cold my hands all the time. I didn’t know any better so I had no idea it was even an issue.

Best Chiropractor - Part 2 - Dr Erica Peabody - Kilimanjaro

By this point in the game, 12 weeks out from surgery, I have skipped what I would count to be 9 migraine headaches (I’m tallying this due to my history of roughly 3 per month). I haven’t had even one. I don’t even get any headaches that I know of anymore, or nothing that I would even count as a tension or cluster headache.

I am able to workout and do what I want to do at this point and feel pretty amazing. Three weeks ago I started back at step aerobic class and looking back on teaching step for over a decade of my life, I feel incredible. The step I take now I can keep up with the HIIT moves and can actually do a burpee without blacking out!!!

I will begin to run again soon. If you have been to my office, you can see my collection of participation medals although not many from anytime recently. I will know more once I begin to train for the CRIM this year, it is a race I have done numerous times and I am curious to see if my finishing times improve and just how well I recover. I will begin back to the triathlon sport as well and look forward to seeing how my swimming progresses.

If you have followed this blog at all, you know that I had a severe foot injury following my summit of Mt Kilimanjaro back in 2017. (I have added the video log link below in case you missed it thus far…it was EPIC!!)

I wore a walking boot for 6 solid months and have been working with that foot at about 80% healed. Now I am beginning to not even have to think about it at all…warm hands and feet mean that blood supply is actually going to my feet at a better rate and I AM HEALING!!!

I truly feel great and I am so, so, so, so grateful to have been a candidate for the closure as I just know for the next decades of my life, I will be far better off.

One of the questions I have gotten a few times along the way is “how do I find out if I have this or not?” as a few of you may be suspecting something similar for yourself now listening to this story. I have to send you right back to your own general practitioner to get that resolved.

The recovery has been amazing and pretty simple for the most part. The cardiologist had me on a blood thinner since the anatomy of the heart changed and has since taken me off to proceed into my life exactly as I want to.

Dr Erica Peabody - Part 2 - Best Chiropractor Fenton Michigan

Your words of encouragement as well and your good wishes are appreciated more than I can really say in words here on this blog. It has been quite an experience and I hope that my sharing this information, that you feel a little more informed and educated about the possibilities.

Of course, all along I have continued chiropractic care, massage therapy and stayed in touch with my functional medicine practitioner. I have continued yoga and meditation and am now back at full capacity in the gym. In essence, I have done the things that we talk about in the practice all the time: eat well, move well and think well. These are truly the keys to optimizing the body and it’s inborn ability to heal, and even more critical to healing from something like that.

Thanks for checking back for part 2 and stay in touch as time progresses…there is a lot more to share!

FULL CIRCLE

On Saturday night, my life came full circle.

I was invited back to my varsity soccer field for the alumni game.

I graduated from Fenton High School and although I was a three sport athlete, my heart was in soccer.

As a freshman, I was pulled up onto the varsity squad and of course back then, that was a really big deal. I got to play with the older and more mature team that, in my naive mind, was really going places. By my senior year, I was team captain.

Best Chiropractor Fenton Michigan - Dr Erica Peabody - Full Circle — the shoes – and our favorite team socks!

Once I went off to college, I played club soccer at Michigan State University but it was just for fun. Beyond my first year in college, I put my cleats and flats up on the shelf and there they have sat…well technically in a box and moved them all over the country for the past 24 years and pulled them out for Saturday night!!! LOL!!! That is a true story! In fact, the flats that I have saved were Adidas Samba light blue suede and the material has deteriorated so much they are literally falling apart!

Walking hand in hand through the gates of that field with my husband was a wild experience. The field is the same, only has had major upgrades since I played there…as has MY LIFE!!!

The evening was absolutely beautiful and I had SO MUCH FUN! Of course, some of my teammates wrangled me back onto the field and then showed up in regular street clothes and sat the bench. I don’t know how I was swindled like that but in the end, I guess that was probably the only real way to get me back on the field. It was great to catch up with those beautiful ladies and their families after all this time. LADIES!!! NEXT TIME YOU ARE PLAYING!!! Plan accordingly and BRING YOUR CLEATS!!!

As I sat there, drinking a Mead from another friend from back in the day, I couldn’t help but feel that coming-full-circle concept…and WOW what a circle I have come!!!

I have always wondered with how far I went and then how in the world I ended up back in Fenton after all. It feels right though, it definitely feels right to be in Fenton.

And to think that I am the owner of the crazy HUGE blue Victorian home/office space on the corner of the town I grew up in and the community that has helped to shape me into the person I am today, it sometimes feels like the twilight zone.

So let’s talk about the game – I guess I didn’t really put it all together that the word “alumni” includes those that just graduated in May of this year, 2019. “Alumni” is not gender specific although for some reason I had it in my mind that women would appreciate going back to their field as much as I do.

So I end up out on the field with 18 year old exceptional athletes, a few of my own patients, running circles around me!!! LOL!!! Actually I can hold my own alright for not even have kicked a ball for a couple decades because I was always a strategist and conserving my energy while out on the field.

The one thing I didn’t expect was that soccer balls, kicked back into play from the goalie that I assumed just graduated, literally came falling back into play from what seemed like OUTER SPACE!!! My last plays were with women, 20+ years ago, and although we could kick high and far, it was a fraction of that height and distance!!! Try trapping a ball coming down from OUTER SPACE!!!

It was an experience to say the least and I am laughing still from the weekend. I got to touch the ball and participate enough during the game that I felt like I had made some solid contribution. I dribbled and passed but as the team was trying to feed the ball to the “older one” to attempt to score, the sacrifice and reach of a foot out there in a lunge position to attempt a shot on goal, my mind keeps me in a “self preservation” mode and limited. Ultimately, no matter how much fun I could possibly have on Saturday night, I still have to be able to walk on Monday morning when patients arrive back in my office.

WHAT A BLAST!!!! My life doesn’t allow a whole lot of extra time to pursue a recreational indoor league or something like that right now, but my love for soccer is life-long and I am so so glad that it has all come full circle.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BIG BLUE

June 14, 2019 marks one year. Happy Birthday Big Blue!!!
The first look at the insides of this beautiful building, I had no real idea that it would come this far.
I saw the listing come up on www.Zillow.com and sent it on to my realtor to see if I could get a look at it. My Mom and I met the realtor here for the initial walk-through and truly we were “just going to look, we had always wanted to see the inside anyway.” We were pretty convinced that the place would smell strange and/or be unrecoverable and not even an option before going in.
Halfway through the initial visit, my mom and I looked at each other in almost the exact same moment and said “WOW!!! This place is amazing and the main floor is set up already for us. This just might work!”
Fast forward 4 months of day in and day out due diligence; all the things the bank wanted, the inspections, the tests, the surveys, the walk-throughs, the research, all the things and it was finally closing time.
I was nervous because of what was ahead of me but I was also pretty confident because there was so much working in my favor and so, so, so many things that easily fell into place along the way. It was just meant to be.
From June 14, we needed to wait about 30 days to get keys. This building was an assisted living location since the 1960s and they needed some time to relocate the residents. To be honest with you, I am pretty confident that any place they were relocated to would have been a better fit than this and along the past year, as I hear stories, I am confident they are all better off where they ended up.
As we progressed into the summertime last year we got keys in the middle of July and I actually moved myself in while I was waiting for my new home to be completed.
That was supposed to be until October.
9 months later I got certificate of occupancy at the new house and moved out of Big Blue.
But in all actuality it was a blessing for sure. A blessing that I had a super cool place to stay. A blessing that I got a chance to really get to know Big Blue and all of her quirks. A blessing as through the last winter, with those incredibly frigid temperatures, I was able to just walk downstairs to go to work rather than have to be outside and face the elements. I never dreamed I would get a chance to “work from home” but it was a treat.
Our master plan was to get some of the 17 bedrooms open by this spring and rented as office space.
We are past spring.
But inside of this past year you probably also know we planned an executed a wedding and I became bonus mom to triplet teenagers.
What you probably don’t know is that we also had to fire the builder back in October for unbelievable negligence and take over finishing the very complicated new house build ourselves.
To say it has been a year, is an absolute understatement. I am not even sure how we survived it. Some of my phone conversations to my Mom would have her stop me mid sentence and say “How are you even doing all of this?”
I don’t know Mom. I don’t know. I just get up everyday and, because I am excited and passionate about what I am doing and where I am heading, I just do what needs to be done and keep working on all the “to-do” list stuff I can and then rinse and repeat the next day. When we got to move the Cafe pf LIFE Chiropractic office over in September last year, my incredible office manager, Nikki and I would wander around the place on the very first day like it was our home forever. It feels like home here, it really does and has since day 1.

So today, HAPPY BIRTHDAY BIG BLUE!!!

SUPER BOWL

I had a really interesting Super Bowl experience this year and I will tell you a little bit about how it went.

First off, I didn’t even realize it was Super Bowl weekend until maybe Friday. I do like to watch sports but my time is demanded in other areas of life right now and I haven’t even watched one single professional football game this year, and maybe caught portions of 2 Spartan games (and I don’t mean going to the stadium, I mean just on TV) the entire season.

We missed the entire first quarter of the Super Bowl and started around 8 minutes left in the second quarter. Of course the half-time show was great however I am still wondering why a guy like Adam Levine needed to take his shirt off? I am so confused by that. He is crazy talented and put on an exceptional show, and as soon as he took his shirt off, it sort of ruined it for me. Am I the only one?

Second half started and I fell asleep, not because of the pace of the game, but because the energy the TV puts out is so low and slow that I sit down and zonk right out. I was a little surprised by that but I do not have TV in my house and I do not watch any TV on a regular basis and I feel like my brain was sort of saying “A better use of my time right now is to rest.” We had a very busy weekend and so I am actually grateful to have spent some good time sleeping.

I woke up with 5 minutes left of the game. The Patriots were ahead. In all sporting events, the last minutes are the best so I was intently watching as they progressed through those last few.

Good Game Patriots!!!

Here is what I learned from watching the Super Bowl this year:

I am not a fan of TV and every time I turn it on, I want to turn it off immediately. The commercials are not even worth watching the game anymore…well except for maybe the Verizon commercial, that was really well done, but I am already a Verizon customer.

I learned I value my sleep over anything the media has to offer. The game gathers a lot of energy around it and people get really excited and happy. I am massively impressed by Tom Brady; for his performance on the field over and over and over, that is a given. More than that I am impressed with an athlete who really values health and puts in the work to keep his aging body, and brain, at tip top shape as the years go by. He fuels his body and works out, of course, but more than that, if you listen to interviews, podcasts and read some of the articles over the years, his value on health is right at the top of his priority list.

I am a pretty big fan of the idea that health comes from within and that it happens through continuously doing healthy things, and that we don’t get something for nothing and it REQUIRES WORK!!!! Tom also is a huge proponent of chiropractic care, and not just for pain, but for optimal performance. In fact, all NFL teams have a team chiropractor these days.

Now, I am no dummy to the fact that there are possibly some things that are in the hush hush about his life and actions behind the scenes, I believe those at the top of a game like that have some secrets somewhere.

I also learned that I love my little family-to-be (in 5 weeks from now) and when we spend time together, it fills my heart. I love my future husband and the fact that he will snuggle in on the couch with me for hours even if I am sleeping.

Over the years, people have asked “how do you live without TV?” My honest answer is “I don’t believe much in spending my time that way”, however, now I realize there is a bit that I can learn from watching the Super Bowl. 🙂

LAUGHTER

Laughter helps everything.

There has been a lot going on in life lately, all of it really good stuff but keeping laughter at the forefront of it all helps everything!

For Memorial Day weekend, Mike and I headed up north to be with my family. On Saturday we decided to kayak/canoe/float the Betsie River which runs right by my parent’s house. It was a beautiful day, quite warm for late May in Northern Michigan and it felt great to get out on the river. I always forget how relaxing and healing a nice float down the river is until I am on it.

Mike insisted that I just relax in the front of the tandem kayak and not paddle and that he had it all handled. I trusted him completely and he gave me very little reason not to…at least for the first part of the trip.

We had rented a sit-on-top kayak from Crystal Adventures. The adventure company owners advised that we bring one of their dry sacks with us on the boat and I said “It is nearly impossible to tip one of those things over but we will for sure take one.”

Famous. Last. Words.

Mike did and incredible job (THANKS BABE!!!) at navigating the river until one tricky part. I was so used to sitting back and taking in the scenery that I did not see it coming and I don’t think he did either. A big tree branch was down in the water and in very slow motion, I remember being in total disbelief it was even happening, the kayak got stuck, the current was super strong and tipped us right over. I grabbed the stuff that I could and the rest headed down the river to be retrieved by other family members. We were both soaked in clothes not necessarily planned for dunking in the river but laughing. I am not sure what else there was to do but laugh. Mike felt bad but was also sort of bruised up. I had some scratches and bruises and we just laughed and went on our merry way.

Around the bend, my brothers were whispering to each other “That must really be the right guy for her if she was that calm, cool, collected and both of them were just laughing.” They were pretty shocked at our response to the whole thing.

All the weekends, and weeks for that matter, are spent managing things, handling projects and making things happen. This past weekend was no exception as we framed and wired an entire basement at one of my rental properties. It is a rather large space and a lot of work. We finished the project around 10pm on Sunday and were wrapping everything up, finishing laundry and loading the dishwasher. We sat down in the living room for a few minutes and as we were heading up to bed, Mike put a couple things in the sink. As he stepped up to the sink, something felt strange. Looking down was the view in the picture below!

You see, neither of us has had a dishwasher in our lives for over a year. I am not sure how he did it but mistook liquid dish soap for dishwasher soap and the kitchen was filling up with bubbles. I just start laughing. First off, we are old enough and know better, or at least I thought we did. But secondly, we have both missed having dishwashers in our homes so much it has been something we have looked so forward to!

Here he is standing in ankle deep suds from putting the wrong cleaning product into the dishwasher and bubbles and spewing out the sides and continue to flow. I am laughing so hard at this point that I think I am actually making him a little irritated. Through laughter “BABE!!!! How on Earth did you do this???” both on hands and knees cleaning up the floor. (Side note: our kitchen floor is extra shiny and nice now!!)

We pretty much laughed ourselves to sleep that night.

Laughter helps everything!!! Truly lightens the mood, shifts the tone and make it all better. Mike and I do a lot of laughing together all the time, life is just too short to be any other way.

Look around in your life. Are there areas you can laugh more? Are there things you can laugh about instead of get angry or irritated with? How can you choose laughter more through your days? We only get one chance in this life!!! Let’s have some FUN!!!!

SURRENDER

Many things have crossed my mind over the past 3 months, many, many, many life lessons learned and one of the greatest has been SURRENDER.

In the 10 days that we were on Mt. Kilimanjaro and and traveling to and from Africa, I counted somewhere around a total of 24 hours of sleep. Once I was on the mountain, I averaged around 3 hours of sleep per night.

The dayss would look like this:

The team would come to each tent and wake us up at 6:30am.
We would make it to breakfast at 7 and on the trail around 8.
We would hike for 3-4 hours and stop for lunch. We would hike another 3-4 hours to the next camp so our days were around 6-8 hours of total hiking time.
We would get settled in and they would call us for dinner around 6:30-7pm.
We would get our briefing for the following day, turn our water bladders for our camelbaks in and head back to our tents around 8-8:30.

At this point we were free to go to sleep and that would have been AWESOME if I would have been able to. There is this thing called “high altitude insomnia”. It happens because the heart is beating faster than usual, like it does for exercise, because there is less oxygen. My my mind thought my body was still working out and it is very hard to sleep with my body in that mode.

My usual is I would finally find sleep around 11ish and sleep for about 3 hours and then be up for the rest of the night. This happened every single night. I would lay there frustrated because I knew every minute I wasn’t sleeping was also a minute my body wasn’t truly resting and recuperating from the intense day before and not really able to prepare for the next intense day ahead.

When the team would come by the tent at 6:30am to wake us up again, I would be so beside myself with frustration.

I would get my stuff packed up anyway. I would strap my boots on and get my backpack ready, grab my water and be ready for breakfast no matter what. In the back of my mind I would think to myself, “maybe later tonight I will be able to finally sleep”.

The thing is, I felt miserable inside in those moments. But there are 30 other women maybe feeling just the same or having some other experience just as miserable. It didn’t do me any good to complain to anyone. I would get in this mode of I need to do what needs to be done right now, which was strap my boots on and prepare for the day ahead. Even though it would have felt good to at least express my stress and frustration to the staff, that didn’t matter either because the trail heads in one direction, it isn’t an “out and back”. We start on one trail and continue to another one for the descent. Forward momentum is vital.

It didn’t matter how much I slept that night, or the night before, or the previous 6 nights. It didn’t matter how sore I was, how foggy my head was, nothing mattered but forward momentum and so I knew I better get started.

Endurance, the whole “put your big girl panties on and step forward“ness of this trip was such a powerful lesson in surrender. I had many logical reasons to resist what was happening and most people in that position would have similar self-talk going on about the whole scenario. But pure surrender, strapping on my boots and getting after the task at hand for that day was my only option. There was no turning around, no turning back and only one way to move. FORWARD!

When I equate this to things in my life back home, I see how this lesson has served me so well in the past few months. I have a different view on life. I have spent a lot of my years paddling upstream. I have spent so much time and effort pushing against the current going in the other direction. The past three months I have spent more time setting down my oars, surrendering and allowing myself to be pushed in the direction that life is trying to naturally take me anyway.

I have always had high and lofty goals for my life and I always will. Though I have goals and the “WHAT” I want to accomplish figured out, I don’t have to be so wrapped up in trying to control the “HOW” it all happens. I set some really powerful intentions at the beginning of April this year and life has unfolded more beautifully than I could have ever imagined. I am in shock and awe sometimes knowing that the most powerful move I can make is keep surrendering my own plan for the bigger plan of the Universe.

Maybe surrender in your mind means “to give up”, “to give in” an “to stop progress”. To me, it means to “let go and let God”. It also means to set the goals you want to achieve but surrender to the process of how it all unfolds. Our thoughts about how we want things to be or how we want them to look is usually a limited view of what is really possible. I have been taught this lesson over and over and over.

My action of surrender in the mornings on Mt. Kilimanjaro was the moment I strapped my boots on. From that point I would stand up from the tent, put my arms through the straps of my backpack, embrace the unknown for the day ahead (have no idea exactly what the day would hold, which direction we were going or how long it would take) and start stepping one foot in front of the other.

“Surrender isn’t about being passive, it is about being open.” -Danielle LaPorte

For 8 solid days, this strategy worked and I realized it would work for my life when I got home as well “Have a goal and a destination ahead, surrender to the process of the steps in getting there.” Yet another humbling life lesson and a huge THANK YOU to KILIMANJARO!!!

BEST CASE SCENARIO

I work with hundreds of people on a regular basis. It is the most wonderful and rewarding work and I feel blessed to be able to serve in the way that I do. Lets talk about best case scenario.

At the Cafe of LIFE we see people that are really struggling with their health as well as people that are feeling good and want to remain that way. I learn a lot about people by interacting in the way I do and helping them to express a better them. All kinds of wonderful things come up for people and I love that there are some real break-throughs happening on a daily basis.

I do see a pattern happening that I want to address. I think it is simply a human thing, though I am sure it is largely influenced by our culture. Whether people are starting from a place of feeling really good, or feeling really bad, when something happens, some sort of new symptom or aggravation happens…the human mind goes automatically into “WORSE CASE SCENARIO” mode. Some people have taken very minor things that have been going on for about 2 hours and seriously talked themselves into this may be the end of their lives. I am not sure when we lost the faith in our body’s ability to adapt and heal from just about anything, but we did. Instead of saying “Oh this sinus infection has been going on for 2 days, but my body can fight this off and I will be better in the long run for letting my immune system kick in”, people are running out for some remedy that will help with the symptom, which almost always compromises the immune system and doesn’t allow it to do what it was designed to do. Or “My wrist hurts, but it has only been an hour or so and I am sure my body will handle it” they go to the MD and immediately get it x-rayed to make sure there isn’t a tumor. These are just a couple examples to give you the idea of how extreme our thought patterns are.

My point being…let’s start giving our bodies the benefit of the doubt. The body’s ability to heal is much more powerful then anyone (and especially the media) has lead you to believe. We all have within us an inborn, recuperative power that is in charge of proper adaptation and integration of the many stresses we encounter every day. When things come up, let’s start thinking BEST CASE SCENARIO and that have a mindset of “my body can probably take care of this” and watch and wait. If you are doing all the right stuff with diet and exercise, getting good rest, keeping a positive attitude, staying away from toxins, and getting regular checks for your spine and nerve system, a large percentage of the time the body will do just that…TAKE CARE OF ITSELF. When the body is given the opportunity to take care of itself, and it does, we are better off than if we continue trying to combat symptoms with drugs and surgery. We only get one chance…let’s keep focused on BEST CASE SCENARIO.